El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera Review/Transcript
(Shows a kid playing with a yo-yo, Manny bursts in) Manny: 'Stop wasting time with that yo-yo and do something constructive! Like...learn to play the banjo! ''(The kid starts playing) 'Manny: '''Play better! ''(The kid plays faster) (Intro) So, in a lot of my older videos, I said that El Tigre ''was...good. I thought that it was. And uh...ooohhhh...boy, was I wrong. But how can-how can you really blame me, even though growing up I had never really watched this show, maybe one or two episodes that I don't remember very well, I didn't quite know what to expect going in. But I ''did know that this show was a cult classic like Catscratch ''or ''Invader Zim, and I knew that it was really popular in some circles. It had even won a bunch of Emmys so, please pardon me if I thought that this show was...more than it was. Although there were probably a few clues that I should have noticed, that would let me in on this show "not being as good as I actually thought that it was." For one, it won a bunch of Emmys. If you don't know, the Emmys are ''incredibly bad at picking what's a good cartoon and what isn't. At least in the world of children's animation. Actually, I don't know if that's the half of it. The Emmys are...like, the worst award show in the world by what they pick, and when we're speaking about the world of award shows, that's...that's astounding. Believe it or not, the Emmys seem to have more in common with the Razzies than the Oscars. Let me put it this way, El Tigre ''has the most Emmy awards of any Nicktoon. Except for one: ''Fanboy & Chum Chum. El Tigre ''and ''Fanboy and Chum Chum ''are tied for the Nicktoons with the most Emmys. Does it deserve that distinction? I-I don't know if ''El Tigre ''is as bad as ''Fanboy and Chum Chum, but I do think that it deserves at least ''one ''of animation's equivalence of the Razzies. El Tigre ''is one of the Nicktoons that I actually had high hopes for going into, thinking that I'd be seeing this new underrated classic that I'd ever seen. You know, like I got with ''Catscratch. What I got here was a piece of poop. El Tigre's about a Mexican boy named Manny Rivera. He's a kid with superpowers and the gimmick of the show is that his father's a superhero and his grandfather's a supervillain, and the entirety of the show is about his slow realization that he's eventually gonna become a supervillain. Actually that sounds a lot cooler and gives a lot more credit than what the show actually does. The episodes of this show are entirely about morality tales, you know like you'd find on Nick Jr. or something. The ''actual ''premise that's presented to us is that Manny must decide whether to fall into villainy, or rise up into being a hero. That actually sounds like a really interesting premise. It is ''a really interesting premise. At least on the surface of it. Technically speaking, any show with morality lessons is about that. Good vs. evil, it's a common theme and it is not groundbreaking. What ''is ''groundbreaking with this show is how appealing they make evil seem. Manny's father's pathetic. Like, one of the most '''pathetic' father figures I've ever seen in any cartoon ever. I don't mean that he's outright abusive like Buck Cluck- Buck Cluck: '''Ha, you gotta be ready to listen to your children, even if they have nothing to say! Or absentminded like the ''Rugrats ''parents. I mean he's the traditional form of pathetic. He's a wimp, constantly crying and has a mental breakdown ''every other episode. My "favorite" episode about this show is how Mr. Rivera is all up-in-arms about playing soccer as honorably as possible, and not having his team cheat any way whatsoever. He goes on to gleefully state that this made him lose the championship game and then everyone hated him through and through and threw rocks at him. Like I said, ''El Tigre ''is fairly groundbreaking because they claim that cheating was far better than fair play. Because if you play fair, you will lose and everyone will hate you! And you should cheat anyway because everyone else is doing it! Also, they called it "soccer" despite being a show with Hispanic themes. You know, soccer, the game that's called "football" in every Hispanic place in the world. Quite honestly, this show kinda just gives lip service to Latin American themes. This show is called ''El Tigre, it has superheroes that look like Mexican wrestlers, with Mexican accents. But beyond that, the Hispanic themes just feel...superficial. For instance, the police wear sombreros that have the word "Police" on them. The Spanish word for "police" is "polícia," which I think their target audience would probably be able to understand. Look, I'm sorry, but when Dora the Explorer ''is willing to get more cultural than you, I'm gonna have a bit of an issue with your show. Quite honestly, ''El Tigre ''can feel very stereotypical. And I'm not talking like to an offensive degree or anything. It just feels like...an outsider looking into Mexican culture and doing the '''bare '''minimum to make a show with Mexican themes. Having everyone in a position of power wearing a sombrero for instance feels...very off. Like, just a...random white guy saying "It's a Mexican thing! I know it's a Mexican thing, so let's just put it everywhere, like, fucking everywhere!" And this, really shouldn't be the case because I know for a fact that the creator of this show knows a lot about Mexican culture. You know...the fact that he ''is ''Mexican, and the fact that he went on to make ''The Book of Life. I can only assume that it's network shit saying that kids wouldn't understand anything about the most "superficial aspects" of another culture. Then again, ''Avatar ''was already out at this time so I don't know what to think. This stuff though, it-it would all be...forgivable if the ''writing wasn't so godawful! This show has objectively 'terrible writing. It feels very "Butch Hartman-esque." And I'm not talking about "good, prime Butch Hartman." I-I'm talking "''Bunsen was a Beast, OAXIS trailer Butch Hartman." There is a lot of "And then the Opposite Happens!" jokes. And of course, there's my new favorite cliche to rant about: Character 1 does something very bad to their friend. Then they want to confess. The friend goes "I just want to tell you that you're the most trustworthy person that I ever know and you'd never do anything bad to me ever! So what were you saying?" That joke happens...more than you might expect in this show. More than it's tolerable in this show. And-and it's always...pretty much the exact same joke. While you will hear ''some variety, it's continually on that level. Over '''and '''over '''and over again. And even when it's not that joke, pretty much '''all '''the humor in the show follows that formula. '''All of it. But my main problem '''with this show is that Manny? He's gonna become a villain growing up. There's no mystery in this premise whatsoever. Why? Because he keeps '''fucking up. In the same way. '''In '''every. Single. Episode. The joke about honesty keeps coming up, because in the first three episodes in a row, they're pretty much all about Manny lying! Again and again and again! Refusing to learn his lesson! Not to mention, his superhero role model is pathetic. This is a show where the good guys don't seem to get anywhere. Not to mention there's only so many times that you can kidnap pets for reward money, or poison a zeedonk before you become an irredeemable little shit! You tend to be the summation of your five closest friends, and well, Frida is evil. Like, legitimately an evil character. Morality, chaotic evil. I don't think I've seen her do one morally good or even neutral thing throughout the series. She is constantly getting Manny to do evil things throughout the entire show. It was her idea to steal all the pets in Miracle City to cash in on the reward money! Again! Frida: '''You know...people around here are gonna lose their pets again, sooner or later. Maybe we could...speed things up a little... If Manny wasn't gonna turn into a villain, then she would've eventually. Now there's a series! Two kids were once best friends, but one of them decided that they needed to uphold the values of good and justice, but his best friend fell into the worlds of villainy. Too bad we don't get that! Look, all I'm saying here is that during the episode where the best friends are separated, my first thought shouldn't be "Good!". No seriously, that's '''all I could think about during that episode. Frida is a terrible influence on Manny, and if Manny was my kid, I wouldn't want Frida within a hundred miles of him! The show does have its own unique art style which I do kinda like. The problem is that it's one of those styles that looks good in single drawings, but in actual motion it looks really bad. The action suffers quite a bit, because it doesn't have the impacts that a show like Danny Phantom ''or ''My Life as a Teenage Robot ''had. But one of the worst aspects of the animation is the expression. They feel '''very,'' very...wrong ''with this style. In essence, it's kinda like the Mona Lisa getting a Steven Universe ''bean smile. It 'does not 'go together 'at all'. If you wanna watch a superhero show with heavy Mexican themes, then, watch ''¡Mucha Lucha!. And when you get down to it, ¡Mucha Lucha! ''is this show, but better in literally every single way. That show can get a little gross with Flea, but it's much better put-together, and you know, it doesn't make the forces of good look pathetic as Manny's father. And I'm really glad that the creator of this show moved on to bigger and better things. ''The Book of Life ''is a really, really good movie, and it is so much better than ''El Tigre ''in every single way. Even if the villain looks ''distressingly ''like Discord from ''Friendship is Magic. 'Announcer: '''Next on Nickelodeon... ''(Shows clip from the Tak and the Power of Juju intro) (End Credits Theme: El Tigre Theme Song) Category:Nick-o-Rama Category:Transcripts